Patients have become more involved with their care. Therefore, healthcare systems and providers are under intense pressure to change the dynamics of their interactions with patients and prospective patients.

Mergers & Acquisitions: How Will They Shape Martech?

By: Joe Conner | 06/26/2019

In the information age we live in, consumers are more knowledgeable than ever before. This has made it more difficult to use traditional marketing tactics. In order for a company to remain relevant in today’s increasingly competitive market, they need to find a way to personalize their marketing strategies. Providing more personalized content to the consumer will help marketers attract their target market in a more compelling manner. Delivering the right information, to the right person, at the right time is how today’s market leaders are effectively engaging with consumers.

This change in consumer behavior has not only had an impact on marketers, but it has also created the need for more powerful marketing tools. Various technologies, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Artificial Intelligence (AI), data analytics, and marketing automation tools, allow companies to accomplish this personalization. As marketers begin to rely on these tools, technology companies are trying to find new ways to better serve their clients, leading to many recent martech company mergers & acquisitions.

But how will this impact current marketing technology? Check out the 3 biggest, most recent acquisitions that are shaping martech and what this means for the future.

Salesforce Acquires Tableau

In order to personalize your marketing, you need to have as much information about your consumer as possible. Salesforce, a widely popular CRM tool, helps companies organize and store the data they gather on their customer base. How useful can data be without a means of understanding it? Cue Tableau Software, an end-to-end business intelligence platform that uses analytics to allow you to turn your data into insights.

Salesforce bought Tableau this year for $15.3 billion. Now, the platforms can work hand-in-hand, helping clients take raw data and make it more comprehensible through tables, maps, and graphs. Companies that are unable to make quick sense out of their data are at an immediate competitive disadvantage. Salesforce is helping clients combat that with two marketing tools that can be integrated for a seamless experience.

Adobe Acquires Marketo

Adobe offers a large array of creative, analytical, personalization, and content applications and cloud based services. Their products help clients execute various marketing strategies and bring creative ideas to life. Adobe saw an opportunity to provide customers with more personalization capabilities and acquired Marketo for $4.75 billion. This will allow Adobe to offer its customers automation, engagement, and attribution power that wasn’t experienced before the acquisition. Marketo allows clients to personalize rather complex customer journeys and execute different initiatives across a multitude of channels. This integration will benefit both Adobe technologies and the Marketo platform allowing for an enhanced customer experience.

Dun & Bradstreet Acquires Lattice

Every company is likely to have data that needs to be stored, organized, and applied to their marketing strategy. Dun & Bradstreet’s (D&B) data cloud provides its clients with a platform that helps them leverage their data in more effective ways. Data management is an increasingly competitive industry, so with the goal to separate themselves from their competitors, D&B recently acquired Lattice Engines. Lattice Engines is a customer data platform that is powered by AI to allow customers to scale sales and marketing efforts across multiple channels. What does this mean for their clients? They will be able to utilize D&B data and the analytics of Lattice Engines AI in one platform. This allows for a more innovative, efficient approach when analyzing data and applying it across various channels.

What is the Theme?

All of these examples have one common theme or goal for their respective acquisitions: provide a more cohesive technology platform that enables customers to offer a more personalized experience. Technology giants across the world are focusing on enhancing their platform and becoming a one-stop-shop for clients to leverage data. To do this, they are rapidly acquiring AI abilities to help in the discovery of consumer insights. Consumers today have growing expectations for the brands that they interact with. That is why it is important to make sure the experience that is provided is personalized and tailored to each person who engages with the brand. More personalization means a more intricate production for marketers, but a better experience for the consumer.

While all of these tech giants battle for equity in the market, they are further pushing the envelope in the martech space. What tools do you or your company utilize to speak to consumers? What do you think is going to be the next big acquisition in the martech space? Feel free to share in the comments below!